North America

Pitbull dog

Banning specific dog breeds or focusing on responsible dog ownership?

Nathan Winograd has been strongly arguing for some time now that it is immoral and ineffective to ban certain dog breeds and instead the focus should be on dog caregiving and ensuring that it is responsible so that individual dogs behave in an acceptable way. Link to Nathan Winograd’s website He has run a very …

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Photographs of modified bones of adult Hartley mammoth.

Humans present in North America 37,000 years ago based on new mammoth evidence

Professor Timothy Rowe, a palaeontologist and his team at the University of Texas’s Jackson School of Geosciences, has suggested that humans were present in New Mexico, North America 37,000 years ago, which is far earlier than previously thought. He has made this assessment on the basis of the method of butchering a mammoth using stone …

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Kristi Bond, Lucy their dog and her daughter. They won their fight to keep Lucy.

Public safety is enhanced when dogs are targeted by behaviour not appearance

The title is part of a statement from Katie Barnett, an animal law attorney and the attorney for Kristi Bond, the owner of Lucy, a dog which was said by animal control in the area where she lives to be a pit bull type or have the appearance of a pit bull dog. Bond lives …

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Frezco humped a male dog and was branded gay and dumped by owner. They were very misguided

Owner abandoned their dog for being ‘gay’. I explain why they were misguided.

There is a headline which states that a dog was dumped at an animal shelter in the US after the owner complained that he was gay. I mean the dog not the person ?! And the owners decided that their dog, Fezco, was gay because he humped another male dog. The owner made a terrible …

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Pet goat

This is like someone asking you to kill your cat or dog

TEWSKBURY, MASSACHUSETTS, USA – NEWS AND COMMENT: The words in the title are those of Vilmaria Maldonado who treats three six-month-old goats as pets on the Oliveira Farm. The problem is they were allegedly imported into the state of Massachusetts without an interstate Certificate of Veterinary Inspection. And Massachusetts has an agreement with the federal …

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Tethered pig

Florida is set to ban pet tethering despite objections by the NRA

NEWS AND VIEWS: Florida’s lawmakers are set to ban the tethering of pets and leaving them unsupervised. A bill is currently being debated: Senate Bill 650. There is full support on both sides of the house. An influential group voiced their opposition: the National Rifle Association (NRA). A Lobbyist for the NRA, Marion Hammer, argued …

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Child and dog

China or America: poor parenting and poor pet ownership is the major cause of dog bites

A study conducted in China in 2016 looked at the risk of dog bites and cat scratches in two cities; one a medium-sized city, Shantou, and the other a large conurbation, Shenzhen. The general conclusion that I have to draw from the studies that children are most at risk of dog bites and indeed cat …

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Declawing is like this

Most kittens are declawed before they are 8 months old

In the tweet on this page, The Paw Project is saying that the reason why kittens are being declawed at such a young age is to avoid owners being scratched but if they were trained in those early years beyond 8-months-of-age to minimise scratching it would avoid the need to declaw. They refer to this …

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Hammerhead worm

Foot-long hammerhead worm looks like an alien species

Gardeners in Georgia, USA have reported seeing what looks like an alien species: a worm that looks like a snake about 12 inches long with a hammerhead like a hammerhead shark. It is also known as the shovel-headed worm. It is fascinating and at the same time a little bit disgusting but a standard worm …

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Recently declawed cat

American Veterinary Medical Association condemns declawing of wild cats and condones declawing of domestic cats?

Late in the day, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) decided to condemn the declawing of wild cats because they couldn’t see any reason for doing it. There is positively no reason for declawing wild cats. Therefore they have to condemn it. In fact they ‘objected’ to it initially but they’ve hardened their stance by …

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Grey wolf

Reintroducing gray wolves into Colorado

It’s fresh off the press, grey wolves are to be reintroduced into Colorado. It was a narrow vote in favour. They’ll be introduced into the southern Rockies where there’s plenty of habitat. It seems that people are becoming more sensitive to the environment, to nature and wildlife. Perhaps this sentiment has been crystallised by the …

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American Eskimo dog - a spitz-type dog

Spitz-type dogs were bred for wool

The primary reason for the existence of dogs and cats nowadays is that they are companions to humans. They entertain us, make us happier and more relaxed. However, Rhys Blakely, The Times’ science correspondence writes today that there was a time when they were employed in various ways including being bred for wool. He writes …

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Two useful tags. Click either to see the articles: Speciesism - 'them and us' | Cruelty - always shameful

Note: sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified.